Should Analysts Love Their Patients?*

In 1926, on the occasion of Freud's seventieth birthday, Ferenczi wrote that psychoanalysis works through the deepening and enlargement of our knowledge, a task accomplished only through love. Thus, it is the analyst's love that ultimately heals the patient. What is surprising, then, in the sixty years that have passed, is how little has been written about the central and complex nature of love as it enters the analytic process. Far more has been written on the therapeutic uses of hate, about the analyst's rage, greed, grandiosity, competitiveness, despair and hopelessness than about his love. Although we as analysts are supposed to be experts on love, and the subject certainly fascinates all of us, Tauber (1979) addresses the current dilemma well when he writes, “I have thought for a long time that what strongly blocks us is a profound unease in dealing with love, affection and tenderness in our work; we have acknowledged the need to deal with anxiety, hate, rage, etc. but are unclear about and evasive with love, affection and tenderness…” Is Tina Turner speaking to the therapeutic community when she says “What's love got to do with it? Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken?”

Yet we are all therapists with hearts, and none of us would disagree with the importance of such aspects of love as positive regard, empathy, or understanding. Freud, of course, did speak about love and recognized the power of love in the relation of